[5][6] During the 1850s and 1860s, the Royal Navy fought to suppress the slave trade operating out of Zanzibar up to the North Coast of the Arabian Sea.

"[9] Britain's real intentions in East Africa was to stop other European naval powers from establishing any similar bases in the region, and the station's purpose was to protect British trade interests passing through the Western Indian Ocean.

[10] Rawley writes that Captain George Sulivan and his successor directed the activities of the old ship-of-the-line HMS London (1840), reequipped as both prison and hospital, with some success.

[13] In early May 1941, the Commander-in-Chief directed forces to support the pursuit of Pinguin, the German raider that eventually sank after the action of 8 May 1941 against HMS Cornwall.

Also assigned to the station was 814 Naval Air Squadron at China Bay, Ceylon, which unit was at that time equipped with Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers.

During the 1950s, the task for Royal Navy vessels in the East Indies "..was to deliver fighting power in support of British foreign policy, be that in major warfighting (Korea) or low intensity operations such as counterinsurgency (Malaya), and to offer a British military presence in support of national policy.

"At nine o'clock on the morning of 7 September 1958, 'the flag of the one-hundredth Commander in Chief of the East Indies Station, Vice Admiral Sir Hilary Biggs, was hauled down over HMS Jufair,'" the Royal Navy base in Bahrain.

Vice-Admiral Sir Herbert Fitzherbert was the Flag Officer Commanding, Royal Indian Navy, from September 1939 to December 1941.

[25] The Senior Naval Officer, Red Sea, was responsible to the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies, and during the Second World War for a period flew his flag afloat in HMS Egret.

[27] On 18 May 1942 the title was changed again to Flag Officer, Commanding Red Sea and Canal Area, and transferred again to the Eastern Fleet.

The Royal Navy's presence in the Persian Gulf was originally located at Basidu, Qishm Island, in Persia (c. 1850–1935), then later Juffair, Bahrain.